| "Joe Steele" | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Author | Harry Turtledove |
| First Appearance | Stars: Original Stories Based on the Songs of Janis Ian |
| Publisher | DAW |
| Collected | No |
| Genre(s) | Alternate History |
| Publication date | 2003 |
"Joe Steele" is an alternate history short story by Harry Turtledove. It was published in Stars: Original Stories Based on the Songs of Janis Ian (eds. Janis Ian and Mike Resnick), DAW 2003 (0756401771); and The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-first Annual Collection (ed. Gardner Dozois), St. Martin's/Griffin 2004 (0312324782, 0312324790). An audio version is available at Escape Pod, read by Stephen Eley.
Summary
The idea behind the story comes from a line from a Janis Ian song "God & the FBI" which says that "Stalin was a Democrat". The story's point of departure is that the parents of Iosef Djugashvili (unnamed in the story, but clearly recognizable) migrated from the Russian Empire to the United States in June 1878, so that Iosef was born in California, making him a natural born USA citizen. Iosef adopts the name Joe Steele (which in Russian, would basically translate as Joseph Stalin) and becomes a Democratic congressman representing Fresno. In 1932, Steele is in a neck and neck competition with New York Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt to be the Democratic nominee for President. Steele's chief campaign strategists are Lazar Kagan, Anastas Mikoyan, and Vyacheslav Molotov (although the latter, in this story, is only called the Hammer), suggesting that their families all just happened to migrate at surprisingly opportune times as Djugashvili's did, although this improbable plot point is not examined. Just as the Democratic Convention is deadlocked in a stalemate, the Governor's Mansion in Albany burns down. FDR, unable to flee because he is stuck in a wheelchair upstairs, is reduced to a charbroiled corpse. Steele professes to be grieved by the tragic death of his rival, and presents plausible alibis to disprove the lingering suspicion that either he, Kagan, Mikoyan, or the Hammer caused the fire. With no rivals for the nomination, Steele's candidacy is formalized, and he trounces Herbert Hoover in the general election.
As President, Steele begins slowly expanding the power of his office, eliminating opposition with the enthusiastic help of his old campaign team and a new ally in the form of investigations chief J. Edgar Hoover. Steele initiates a massive set of public works projects, called the Four Year Plan, to end unemployment and build industry. He nationalizes banks and collectivizes farms and factories. He meets with great resistance from capitalist ideologues, the Supreme Court and the military, but conveniently "discovers" that prime members of these institutions have been spying for the Nazis, which constitutes treason, a capital crime. After purging these institutions of the condemned traitors, Steele can "pack" the vacancies with loyal yes-men. Soon, the average American is cowed. In his second term (1937-1941) Steele introduces labor camps for political opponents and wrong-thinking citizens. Unrepentant prisoners are exiled to Alaska, North Dakota, and other isolated regions of the country resembling the proverbial Siberia.
Meanwhile, events in Europe spiral towards war, as Adolf Hitler rises to power in Germany, and Leon Trotsky consolidates his control of the Soviet Union. Steele hates both with equal fervor. He refuses to enter the war in 1939, although later he financially supports the United Kingdom and then the Soviet Union, after Hitler's invasion of the latter. Japan attacks the United States in 1941, and Steele takes his country to war against the Axis. After the Soviets push the Nazis out of the crucial city of Trotskygrad, the Normandy invasion takes place in 1944 when Steele fears the possibility of Trotsky's USSR becoming dominant in Europe if the Western powers fail to take a stand. Germany is defeated (with Hitler shooting himself) and attention turns to the Pacific War, which proceeds until December, 1945. The United States and the USSR jointly invade and defeat Japan, which is then divided into USSR-backed North Japan and USA-backed South Japan. After a brief interlude of peace, the North attacks the South in 1948.
Back in 1945, however, Joe Steele had learned of Germany's stillborn atomic bomb project. When Steele interrogates Albert Einstein about this technology, Einstein admits that he had kept Steele in the dark, fearful of how the US might use the bomb. A vengeful purge of Einstein, Leo Szilard, J. Robert Oppenheimer, and other Jewish physicists follows, until Edward Teller pledges to build the bomb in three years. Steele allows him to do so. In the meantime, the USSR begins its own atom bomb project with the aid of other captured scientists. The Japanese War ends when each side drops an atomic bomb on one of each other's Japanese cities in August 1949 (Sapporo gets hit on the 6th, Nagano on the 9th), setting the stage for a Cold War in the 1950s.
The story ends with Steele's death shortly after being elected unopposed to his sixth term, and Vice President John Nance Garner takes the chair after 20 years of relative silence. Garner, Hoover, and the Hammer each attempt to kill each other. Hoover wins this 3-way fight to the death and takes office. The last line of the story implies that he becomes worse than Steele.
Novel
In June 2014, Penguin Books announced that "Joe Steele" would be expanded into a novel, which saw publication in April 2015.
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